Avery Truffleman

And I was like, I don't know.

And as I looked into it, it unfurled into one of the strangest, most interesting stories I've ever done.

And it did end up being sort of a story about ideas and trends.

Okay.

Finland, 1917.

I'll try to make this quick.

So Finland is established as a nation and it is on the, basically the border between Scandinavia and Russia.

And so it has to make this very definitive choice to be like, we are not Slavic.

We are

They're not Scandinavian, technically, but they are Nordic.

They're like, we are aligning ourselves with these guys, with Sweden and Norway.

And they really actively choose to do this, kind of out of fear of being taken over by Russia.

They're like, we are going to make our identity so separate that you can't touch us, that you would never even think of Finland as being a part of Russia.

And the way that they do this is really practical.

They excise witchcraft.

They're like, you are not allowed to practice witchcraft here.

which was a huge thing.

And they were like, we are going to include, like modernist design, this like new Scandinavian design is gonna be like a core tenant of who we are.

Like we are going to look modern and Scandinavian.

And the government supports new designers such as this brilliant young architect named Alvar Aalto.